Monday 06/23- Tuesday 06/24

Monday 06/23/08 – A Day at Sea

Monday was a day at sea, which we used to prepare the blog post for Saturday & Sunday. Bob was at the gym at 7:15 AM, because someone persistently knocked on our door at 7:00, despite strict instructions that he wanted to sleep as long as possible and not to wake him. The responsible person will remain nameless (but she did used to work at LYNX!). Actually, Bob has been to the gym three days out of four, but still has to admit that he is consuming more calories than he is burning. After the gym, it was breakfast, then lunch, then a snooze and then dinner (with a little bit of drinking thrown in). There are two main dining rooms on the ship – one is called “The Summer Palace” and the second one, amazingly, is called “INDIGO”, where we ate on Monday evening. We still have to have one of our party take a picture of us at the entrance to the restaurant.

Tuesday 06/24/08 – Juneau

On Tuesday morning we found out a bit more about the use of the ship’s internet and found that we could borrow a cable to connect in the cabin (connection cable is rented free!). However, when I tried to upload pictures to the blog, Google would not accept them. Another trip back to the internet café, where the manager (a very nice helpful gentleman from Canada) informed me that Google had stopped accepting photos from the ship’s satellite connection two or three days ago and he assumed it was because it was too slow and tied up the Google servers for too long – so there will be no pictures for a few days while we are on the ship.
We were due to dock in Juneau at 2:00 PM and we were in plenty of time but the Norwegian Star was in our spot and we had to wait for it to leave. By the time we tied up and got off the ship, it was already 2:45. Our shuttle driver was there and we were off for our whale watching excursion (six of our party of eight). It was quite cold and windy but the boat had a nice cabin so our journey out into the “Inner Passage” was okay. The captain(Capt. Jack!) was in touch via radio with other local skippers so he knew where to find the whales and in a short while we were seeing “blows” and tails tipping up and the whales diving under and not coming up for 6-7 minutes when they needed to breathe again. Unfortunately, that was all we were seeing and Alison & I were thinking that our whale watching at De Hoop in South Africa last year was a lot more eventful. However, just as we were ready to give up, a mother and calf started to show some activity and all of a sudden the calf started breaching and was clearing the water in a straight up leap. He kept doing it again and again, sometimes only getting halfway out of the water and sometimes completely clearing the water and falling sideways with a mighty splash. It was quite spectacular. Of course, during this time we were now on the top deck of a very rocky boat and the task of getting a photograph at the exact moment that the whale was clear of the water was very difficult. Nevertheless, Alison has some good shots which will ultimately appear on the blog. On our way back from the whale watch to the dock, we stopped at a view site for the Mendenhall Glacier and took photographs. It is very impressive to see and makes you realize the geological marvel of all the glaciers. Of course, the glacier is receding and different people have different ideas about that!
Back at the Juneau dock, we did not re-board the cruise ship as we (and cousin Bernard & Arline) were booked to go to the ”Gold Creek Salmon Bake” and a few minutes later we were picked up and taken to the event, which is quite unique. We had wild Alaskan salmon cooked on the grill to perfection – many thanks to Vic & Carol Wolff who recommended it after their trip to Alaska in Sept. of 2006. After returning to the ship we listened to a music group playing pop music, and just after 10:00 PM, while it was still light, we left the dock at Juneau and started to make our way further north to arrive at Skagway early next morning.